Monday, February 28, 2011

When thinking about blog topics, I came across some list somebody posted. I thought, hey, everyone loves a list! A top-ten list! What fun! Unfortunately, I lost my invitation to the Oscars (again! How annoying!), so I can't present you with a top-ten best/worst dressed list.

Instead, I give you:

Top Ten Thoughts That Flew Into My Head As I Was Writing This!

1. Here is what aliyahbyaccident looks like if you forgot to press alt+shift after typing in Hebrew:שךןטשינטשבבןגקמא

2. Why is it that I never forget to wash but I always forget to bentch?

3. I am seriously considering throwing the children big old invite-the-40-million-kids-in-your-class birthday parties. We keep pushing them off. But we may have to just do it. In fact, Yaakov didn't ask, "Can I have a birthday party?" It was, "For my birthday party, should we invite the whole gan or just the boys?" Don't worry, I'll probably outsource the fun to someone who can conjugate verbs without a cheat sheet. Expensive, yes; less traumatic for my children (and for me), definitely.

4. I am sooooo happy that Ariella always missed "pajama day" in gan - for some reason, they never did it during her gan years. Why am I happy? Because to make up for this injustice, she has decided to do "pajama girl" for Purim this year. And we already have the costume! 'Cuz it's pajamas, get it? The only thing I purchased was a 20 shekel pair of slippers. To quote Chandler, "Could this be any easier?" And although Yaakov had his heart set on Spider/Bat/Superman, when those costumes were nearly 200 shekel, he was perfectly happy with the "neenja" costume for only 80.

5. Having been a customer at 2 banks, I am qualified to ask this question: Why do you all have TWO comfy seats behind the glass, when you only ever have ONE person working there???

6. I will never understand bread. Who figured out, "Hey, let's take this disgusting-tasting stalk, grind it up, mix it up with water and a living organism called yeast, let it rise, bake it, and see what happens? Whaddya say?" But I am thankful for him, whoever he is. Also for his friend, who figured out that if he milks a cow, shakes it (the milk, not the cow) around real fast, and spreads the resulting concoction on bread (preferably warm), it will taste really, really good.

7. No matter what clothing size my children are, that's the size they're out of during sale season.

8. All too often I stride purposefully in a certain direction, only to stop suddenly in the middle of a room and gaze around cluelessly, with absolutely no idea what I was planning to do. Sometimes there's a spatula in my hand. At that point it's easiest to just sit down and read a magazine.

9. On a related note, while I was washing dishes I had two thoughts to share on this list. By the time I got to the computer, I forgot both of them. I can assure you, though, that they were hilarious.

10. Shoot. It's really bugging me that I can't remember those two thoughts. Bugging me in that vague way things bother you when you have an idea and forget them two seconds later. Like, I feel the thought rolling around in the back of my head, and my fingers just aren't long enough to reach in there and grab them. Or some less icky analogy. Arggghhh. I promise to post an addendum if I ever think of them.

However, I will share with you a parenting thought, which will surely be included in my upcoming seminal book on child-rearing, "LeaveMe Alone So I Can Read the Paper/Old Copies of People and Entertainment Weekly."

So, as many of you know - SPOILER ALERT! - kids grow up.

And Ariella is definitely doing this whole "growing up" thing. It's evidenced in the homework, the sleepovers, the running into school with friends without a backwards glance to a frantically waving mommy, the 'tude, the arranging her own social calendar, the dependence (mine on her), the ability to share a knowing glance with her, the sense of humor that, while still heavily reliant on "things that come out of our bodies," can appreciate more subtle forms as well.....

But I breathe a sigh of relief that there is at least one thing standing in the way of us and full-on tweenhood: Fashion sense.

Ariella loves to wear things that "match," so will come out of her room decked out in all manner of pink, for example - pink shirt, pink skirt, pink leggings, pink socks. Not necessarily complementary shades of pink either. She doesn't quite understand why a brown shirt with a brown skirt isn't the height of fashion (though she fondly recalls the day, a few years ago, when Donny dressed Yaakov in that combo, and I told him that Yaakov looked like a large piece of dirt.) She wore the same exact purple shirt and denim skirt two days in a row because after the first day, she and her BFF decided to wear their matching purple shirts and denim skirts the next day.

Or she decides to wear her crew socks over her leggings, because with her ankle socks, some skin shows and it's cold out, Mommy!

Once, I considered telling her that crew socks over leggings might look a little funny, but then I thought, So what? She picked it out herself, she'll be warm, she's independent, she's happy... and I'm happy because somehow, her sense of fashion reminds me that under the homework, the 'tude, and the friends, she gets to be little for a little while longer.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Erev Shabbat: The oldest and youngest are napping, and the short-ish ones are watching a movie. The chicken is cooking, and the other little erev Shabbat things that are left to do can't be done yet - according to law, they must be done immediately before Shabbat, so we can all rush around and yell and throw things. (I exaggerate. A little.) So, time to blog.

1. After a week of marathon birthday parties (i.e. carpooling), I ended the week on a much more fun note - I went out on a date with a cute guy. What's his name again? He's the one who occasionally shows up here to eat and sleep and drink wine. Not necessarily in that order. Ziv, I think he calls himself.

We celebrated by going out to a fancy restaurant in Jerusalem. (Gabriel's.) The celebration? All birthdays and anniversaries since 2009, the last time we went out. And because it's a bloggy, bloggy world, our babysitter was none other than Tali, daughter of Baila. For her commission, Baila received the Golden Globes edition of People magazine. Enjoy it Baila, it was a good one.

2. Ariella and I are learning about the mishkan for her project at school. Every kid has to pick a topic and present to the class about it. Ariella's date is in a month, so we figured it was time to get cracking. Also, she was driving me crazy, asking, "When can we start my חוקר צעיר?"

As we were studying a diagram of the mishkan, she wanted to know if the "חצר" was where the kids could play. I explained that it's not that kind of chatzer and it was considered kadosh as well. She wanted to know exactly where the mommies and daddies davened and where the kids played.("And ye shall build for yourselves a slide, 4 amot high and 3 amot long, covered inside and out in yellow plastic.")

3. Yaakov came home from a birthday party last night and informed me there had not been dinner. When asked if he would like something to eat, he gave us a strange look. "No," he said, his face smeared in chocolate, "I had lots of, you know, mamtakim and junk food." Dinner? We don't need no stinkin' dinner!

4. For all those concerned about Nadav's hair, it is growing back. Unfortunately, it is growing up instead of out. Oh well.

Speaking of which, one of the sleeping beauties is requesting that I come rescue him from his room. I'll let you guess which one that is.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Well, while I am up waiting to see if Nadav will fall asleep or, in fact, will continue to cry until the morning hours (Pick him up! Cry it out! Dance a jig!), I will update you on the latest ramblings.

1. [Though perhaps this should be numbered "0," as you will see...]Yaakov firmly believes that the original Toy Story movie is called "Toy Story Zero." It does not have a number attached to it; ergo, it is number zero. He follows this thought to its logical conclusion: We own Toy Story Zero, Toy Story Two, and Toy Story Three. For some reason, we don't have Toy Story One. But it's out there. Oh yes, it is out there.

2. Last week, I bragged publicly on Facebook that for once, the stars aligned and the birthday party (for Yaakov) was on the same night as the chug (for Ariella). Which meant only ONE night of shlepping small children to and fro.

Well, for those who like to see the bad guy (me, in thise case) get their comeuppance, I am comeupped big time this week.

Sunday night, Ariella was invited to a pajama party (5:00 - 7:00)Tuesday night, Ariella has chug and Yaakov has a birthday party (4:15 - 6:25/5:00 - 7:00)Thursday night, Yaakov has a birthday party HERE and Ariella has a birthday party alllllll the way over THERE (5:00 - 7:00 / 5:00 - 7:00. It is going to be the Amazing Race, Modiin-style, starring me and my intrepid partner, Nadav "Party All Night Long" Rose. I hope we win.)

3. I would like to point out 2 new blogs on the blogroll - Cooking Manager and Healthy Morsel. These are written by experienced bloggers Hannah, of A Mother in Israel Fame and Arica "Factor" Saltzman, of Our Life, respectively. (I have always wanted to use "respectively." Check that off the list.) Both blogs have tips for healthy eating, complete with recipes. And of course are completely endorsed by aliyahbyaccident.I, too, shall be jumping on the food blog bandwagon. My new blog will be entitled CocoaKrispiesforDinner. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Some of you may be familiar with Immigrant Parent. Some of you may even be Immigrant Parent.

Immigrant Parent asks your son's friend if he would "rotzah" something to drink.

Immigrant Parent understands only every other word that the teacher/ganenet is saying (and only every 3rd word if it's after 8:30 PM.)

Immigrant Parents' children have to teach them the classic kids' songs, instead of the other way around.

Well, Immigrant Parent struck with force today.

For about a week, Ariella has been telling me she needs a picture of "Amnon and Tamar." I brushed her off, not quite understanding, but today she tells me, "Mommy, tomorrow is 'partani' (enrichment class in school). I need to get a picture and do research today."

Now, I don't know about you, but where I was educated, we don't learn those stories in Tanach in which the characters might be viewed in an unfavorable light. For example, Rachav was, and always will be, an "innkeeper" and we just completely skipped from chapter 37 to 39 in Breishit. (I will give you all a second to check what was in chapter 38.)

So I was very surprised that Ariella was learning about the story of Amnon and Tamar. Especially since last week the topic in her class was bunnies. How did we jump from there to here? The connection seemed destined to lead me to some very weird places.

And I was even more surprised that her teacher was asking for a picture of this. Wow, she really does go to a progressive school, I thought.

Anyway, I sat her down and tried to explain the difficulty of this assignment. "Maybe your teacher meant Yehuda and Tamar?" I asked; though the story is equally as, um, delicate, at least it's in Breishit, which is what they're learning. "I mean, Amnon and Tamar is a story from Navi. And I'm not sure what your teacher means by getting a picture of it...."

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Today my Tired friend and I had a web writing training session with Web Writer/Content Strategist/Web Contenter/Writing Strategist/Strategic Contenter Extraordinaire Ahava. (Who can also be found here - 10 poofahs if you can find me!)

We learned much, and I hope I actually remember some of it going forward. That would be nice. One thing I did learn is that my blog is not very SEO-friendly. In fact, it is downright unfriendly. Sometimes, my blog just slaps SEO upside the head, for no reason at all.

In any case, I don't do important SEO things like "label" and "tag" and "link." In fact, you will actually see this sentence many times in the blog: "I would link to it but I'm too lazy."

But that's okay with us. You see, we at aliyahbyaccident just like to make fun of stuff. We don't care, really, if lots and lots of people read the blog, or if it's just Momz and DADZ, who is usually a week behind but always catches up. We don't need the "spiders" to "find" us.

I mean, it is important to us to be #1 in "traifin' up the kitchen" - we still are, by the way - but other than that, our "raison d'etre" (that is French for "hors d'ouevre") is just to write stuff that is hopefully funny. Sometimes, we are the only people who find it funny! And that's okay too!

It's Cuttin' Time

In other news, Nadav "Shaggy" Rose was in need of a haircut. You may recall that he already had his first haircut. (I would link to it, but I'm too lazy.)

But hair has a way of continuing to grow, darn it, so a few months later, it was falling into his eyes again. On erev Shabbat, Donny gave him an uneven haircut. As Shabbat was "coming in" (Heblish strikes again), I didn't have time to take a photograph of the lopsided hairdo, unfortunately.

Now, I didn't particularly care that it was uneven and rather dorky looking. The kid's (almost) 9 months old. His social life consists of chatting with the Little People, who are no great shakes in the haircut department either.

But it bothered Donny a great deal - yes, I know those of you who know Donny are just shocked - so after Shabbat, he grabbed his razor and gave Nadav his first military-ish style haircut. Not quite as buzzed as Yaakov, but still pretty short.